World of Warcraft News and Raiding Strategies

Heroic Difficulty
There have not been any across-the-board nerfs to Heroics, let alone any changes made due to complaints about difficulty.

We're happy right now with the overall difficulty of Heroics, but that doesn't mean we won't make tuning adjustments to certain encounters or abilities if we feel they're unintentionally over- or underpowered. That's what we've been doing in our hotfixes recently. Here's an example:

• The Crystal Shards creatures in the Corborus encounter are now level 86, down from 88.

That was a hotfix yesterday. You could argue it's a nerf. Technically, it is. But did it make sense that the Crystal Shards were higher level than the boss? Not really. We felt that needed to change once we saw it being tackled by thousands of players. (Source)

[...] And I'm saying it's unfortunate to view difficulty in such a black-and-white way. We've also made changes that affect difficulty in the other direction that I wouldn't necessarily call buffs.

• Ripsnarl's Summon Vapor mechanic now ignores line of sight and correctly spawns a Vapor in regardless of where players are standing.

Players were able to bypass Vapors using line of sight. This was fixed.

• Impaling Slam by Forgemaster Throngus now does much less damage, but is no longer mitigated by fire resistance.

Yes, this was a reduction in damage to Slam, but damage was reduced so that we could change the ability so it ignores all resistance modifiers, which makes it easier for us to keep the ability tuned how we want.

• The "corpse-catching" mechanic now properly teleports players to the entrance platform of the dungeon.

This didn't necessarily buff difficulty, but it was a change to prevent players from skipping certain trash pulls.

• Troll druids in particular, when shapeshifting into Cat/Bear form, were dealing an extra 5% damage to themselves via Beast Slaying when afflicted by Barion Ashbury's Asphyxiate. This caused them to die instead of being taken down to 1 health. This has been corrected and Asphyxiate now properly ignores damage modifiers.

This one doesn't really reinforce my point, but I thought it was a slightly hilarious issue.

We've also removed experience, reputation, and sometimes loot from several creatures in dungeons which were too easy to farm. (Source)

Phasing
Phasing in World of Warcraft, be it normal phasing or terrain phasing, plays a heavy role in questing right now. Accepting quests, completing quest objectives, turning in a quests: these actions can all move your character from one phase to another for the purpose progressing a specific story.

For clarity, terrain phasing is very similar to normal phasing (which hides or reveals sets of creatures, intractable items, NPCs, and buildings); however, instead of just allowing us to adjust objects in the world, terrain phasing actually gives us the ability to change the world itself -- or, more specifically, how it appears to you. Despite these capabilities, we don't currently use phasing to moderate population levels or arbitrarily isolate characters within a certain level range from the rest of the community *. It's simply a means for us to provide our players with more dynamic and engaging content.

* Goblin, worgen, and death knight starting areas could be considered an exception, given that Kezan, Lost Isles, Gilneas, and Acherus are all separated from the world-at-large via phasing. This is due to the nature of those starting experiences, though, and not out of a desire to restrict player interaction.

Here you will find a list of hotfixes that address various issues related to the release of patch 4.0.3a and World of Warcraft: Cataclysm. While many have already been deployed on all realms, some may not be implemented until the next time your realm is restarted. We will continue to update this thread in the days ahead as additional hotfixes are applied.

December 16
General

• Bonuses from Embrace of the Shale Spider and Blessing of Forgotten Kings can no longer stack.
• Completing Archaeology projects will once again contribute to the guild achievement Making History once the player relogs.
• The Orgrimmar portal to Mount Hyjal should now appear for players who flew directly into Hyjal to start questing, rather than take the Moonglade portal.
• The old and busted Winter's Veil decorations in Brill have been disabled.

Paladin (Forums / Cataclysm Talent Calculator / Beta Skills/Talents)

• Ancient Power now has a 30-second maximum duration and will properly be canceled when zoning or relogging.
• Glyph of Seal of Insight now correctly increases healing done by Word of Glory and Light of Dawn while Seal of Insight is active.

Shaman (Forums / Cataclysm Talent Calculator / Beta Skills/Talents)

• The Mana Tide Totem hotfix from yesterday has been reverted. The Mana Tide buff no longer stacks, as this had a major impact on encounter design.

Warlock (Forums / Cataclysm Talent Calculator / Beta Skills/Talents)

• It is no longer possible to waste a Soulstone by attempting to use it on a dead target. The player will receive an Invalid Target error message at the completion of their channel. In a future patch, we intend this functionality to work correctly, allowing a Soulstone to be used to instantly resurrect a dead target.

Dungeons & Raids
Halls of Origination

• The damage of Fireballs automatically cast by Temple Fireshaper with Molten Barrier active has been adjusted in normal and Heroic difficulty.
• The damage of Pact of Darkness cast by Temple Shadowlancer has been adjusted in normal and Heroic difficulty.

Lost City of Tol'vir

• Siamat will cast Deflecting Winds after a few seconds of entering combat regardless of any abilities used against him at the start of the encounter.
• The damage of Dust Flail cast by Lockmaw has been adjusted in normal difficulty.

The Stonecore

• The Crystal Shards creatures in the Corborus encounter are now level 86, down from 88.

Items

• Both normal and Heroic versions of Heart of Ignacious apply 20-second cooldowns on other similar items, rather than the full 2-minute duration.
• Shroud of Dark Memories and Shade of Death now have different stats.

Professions

• Pyrite Ore is prospectable at 500 Jewelcrafting skill, down from 525.
• Darkbrew Lager can be learned at 415 Cooking skill, down from 425.
• The Engineering item High-Powered Bolt Gun can no longer be used in Arena and Rated Battleground matches.
• Engineers can now purchase Smooth Cogwheels from Frank Natale using 4x Handful of Obsidium Bolts.

Cataclysm shattered the record for fastest-selling PC game when it was released earlier this month, and we were at the official launch events around the world to capture some of the incredible epic-ness on film. Have a look!

If you or a friend are currently playing Wrath of the Lich King and haven’t yet experienced the content Cataclysm has to offer, you can sign up now to play a 10-day free trial version of this latest expansion for World of Warcraft.

During your free trial, you'll undertake epic new quests, explore the reshaped and newly discovered lands of Azeroth, and see the world from a whole new perspective as one of the shape-changing worgen or crafty goblins.

To participate, you’ll need full versions of World of Warcraft and the first two expansions, The Burning Crusade and Wrath of the Lich King. Note that a character of at least level 78 is required to explore the new, high-level zones. More information on the 10-day free trial is available in our FAQ. We look forward to seeing you in the new Azeroth!

In-progress dungeons
If you choose specific dungeons instead of the Random Dungeon option, you should never get an in-progress dungeon. We understand you may be looking for a specific dungeon boss because of a loot drop, achievement, etc., so it may be in your best interest to queue for that particular dungeon if this is the case.

We don't want to make it too easy for players to skip over in-progress dungeons. What would happen is a Dungeon Finder group would virtually always be abandoned as soon as anyone leaves the group.

Also, I think right now you're seeing more in-progress dungeons pop because, in general, the dungeons are more challenging now than they were when the Looking For Dungeon feature was first introduced in Wrath of the Lich King. Some players may get frustrated and bail at the first sign of trouble, instead of realizing that everyone may have to work a little harder than they're used to in order to conquer a dungeon. (Source)

A tank’s job is to protect the group. A big part of that is controlling the enemy. A big part of controlling the enemy is staying alive. Tanks have a lot of tools to stay alive, and mastering those is a major component of learning to play a tank. On the other hand, some of these tools are on long cooldowns, and on some encounters they are intended for use at specific moments in the fight. Furthermore, staying alive isn’t the sole responsibility of the tank, because there will always be one or more healers present whose job it is to keep the tank alive. As such, staying alive can’t be the only thing tanks have to focus on.

So, let’s back up a moment to controlling the enemy. “Control” includes things like positioning the boss, or doing specific things at specific times, such as swapping with an off tank. It also includes making sure the boss doesn’t attack anyone else. That’s where threat generation comes into play.

If threat generation is too easy then the entire risk of the encounter drops. Newsflash: we don’t actually want encounters to be easy. We want encounters to be fun, and for most players, that includes both rewards and risks.

We want tanks to care about the buttons they hit instead of just relying on auto-attacking to control their target. We don’t necessarily want very complicated tank DPS rotations, because as I mentioned above, tanks do have other things to keep track of. But we want their combat abilities to be engaging. Good tanks should be those who control, survive, and generate sufficient threat.

On the other hand, when threat is too hard to maintain, it can be exasperating. Tanks get understandably frustrated when the game is asking them to do something but not giving them the tools to do it. The non-tanks in the group also become frustrated, because they feel throttled. It’s one thing when overcoming the boss is challenging. It feels worse when you know that another player is standing in your way, keeping you from achieving your top performance.

We don’t usually want DPS classes to have to stop attacking in order to keep from generating too much threat. We do want players to pay attention. We don’t think it’s too much to ask for DPS and healers to wait a couple of GCDs for the tank to get the enemy under control -- we’re not asking for five stacks of Sunder Armor these days. What we really mean by proper threat management is knowing things like when it’s time to go all out, when it’s appropriate to use a threat-reducing cooldown, and most importantly, which is the right target to be attacking. I’m not trying to bash pugs here, but I am amazed at how often a nuker will pick a random target instead of the one being tanked, then blame the tank for not holding aggro (and then blame the healer when they die). In short, if threat is too easy, the game is boring. If threat is too difficult, the game is frustrating.

How then do you guys (and the developers!) know when threat is a problem? Here are some handy guidelines.

-- If a tank is trying to generate threat on a single target, and it runs off to kill a DPS class, that’s a problem.

-- If a tank is trying to generate area threat on a group, and the tanked things are running off to kill healers, that’s a problem.

-- If Vengeance falling off causes the tank to lose threat, that’s a problem.

These problems can have a couple of causes. It could be a problem we caused, meaning that even an expertly-played tank has low threat generation because our numbers are undertuned. Or it could be that only an expertly-played tank can generate threat because you’re asked to manage too many abilities. Or it could be that Vengeance is the only thing allowing you to generate enough threat because the size of the buff is masking low threat generation from your abilities. It could also be a problem you need to fix on your end: if someone is nuking or cleaving a random target on a group pull instead of assisting the tank, that’s not the tank’s fault.

Now, there are things we don’t like about threat as a mechanic. It’s fairly gamey as game mechanics go and we think there are probably better ways to communicate it to players. There are some mods that do a very credible job given the limited information we provide, but overall we’d like to present threat better since we’re asking you to take it seriously in the PvE game.

-Greg “Ghostcrawler” Street is the lead systems designer for World of Warcraft and the skipper of a very nice ship where they serve cute sandwiches with the crust removed. And gin.

Here you will find a list of hotfixes that address various issues related to the release of patch 4.0.3a and World of Warcraft: Cataclysm. While many have already been deployed on all realms, some may not be implemented until the next time your realm is restarted. We will continue to update this thread in the days ahead as additional hotfixes are applied.

December 15
General

• Many guards who maintain peace by slaughtering PvPers have been properly buffed to match the stats of Furious Hyjal Wardens. Beware!
• Players are no longer able to go At War with the Dragonmaw faction.
• Trapdoors and transporters should no longer break when hit with area-of-effect abilities.

Druid (Forums / Cataclysm Talent Calculator / Beta Skills/Talents)

• Rake will no longer receive twice the benefit from the Feral druid Mastery Razor Claws.
• Soothe and Wild Mushroom are both correctly benefiting from, and consuming, Predator's Swiftness.

Mage (Forums / Cataclysm Talent Calculator / Beta Skills/Talents)

• Ring of Frost does not cause the mage to stand up (interrupting eating/drinking) while it is active.

Priest (Forums / Cataclysm Talent Calculator / Beta Skills/Talents)

• Blessed Resilience now increases healing received by 15/30%, up from 5/10%.
• Focused Will now reduces damage taken by 5/10% and 10/20%, up from 4/8% and 6/12%.
• Healing done by Glyph of Dispel Magic no longer improperly caps out at a certain health pool range.
• Holy Concentration's mana regeneration component has been increased from 10/20% to 20/40%.
• Player-controlled vehicles return an Invalid Target error when attempting to use Leap of Faith on them.
• Rapture's mana regeneration component has been increased from 1.5/2/2.5 to 2/4/6%.

Shaman (Forums / Cataclysm Talent Calculator / Beta Skills/Talents)

• The Mana Tide buff is now applied for each Mana Tide Totem on the ground.

Warrior (Forums / Cataclysm Talent Calculator / Beta Skills/Talents)

• Rude Interruption is no longer incorrectly consumed by Execute, Mortal Strike, or Overpower.

Dungeons & Raids

• Both the 5- and 20-quest versions of the Dungeon Quests Completed achievements trigger correctly on dungeon quests done.

Baradin Hold

• Argaloth now respects the faction that kills him and does not drop trinkets for the opposing faction.

Bastion of Twilight

• The doors controlled by the Halfus and Ascendant Council encounters should no longer become stuck after a soft reset.

Blackwing Descent

• Arcanotron's Shield should only proc off of player attacks and not things like Searing Totem, pets, etc.
• Players can no longer engage Nefarian without killing all three sub-bosses first.

Deadmines

• Defias Blood Wizards, Defias Shadowguards, and Defias Enforcers summoned during the Vanessa VanCleef encounter no longer award experience.

Halls of Origination

• Spatial Anomaly can no longer critically hit.
• Setesh's movement speed has been decreased.

Lost City of the Tol'vir

• Frenzied Crocolisks should always despawn when Lockmaw resets.

Shadowfang Keep

• Troll druids in particular, when shapeshifting into Cat/Bear form, were dealing an extra 5% damage to themselves via Beast Slaying when afflicted by Barion Ashbury's Asphyxiate. This caused them to die instead of being taken down to 1 health. This has been corrected and Asphyxiate now properly ignores damage modifiers.

The Stonecore

• Slabhide can no longer be killed while he's in his air phase, and can be properly killed when he's back on the ground.
• Flame Ascendants are now dropping loot that is appropriate for non-elite creatures.

Stratholme

• Eyes of Naxxramas will now spawn a set number of Gargoyles (2).
• The Vortex Pinnacle
• The "corpse-catching" mechanic now properly teleports players to the entrance platform of the dungeon.

Items

• Normal and Heroic versions of the Corrupted Egg Shell were not properly granting mana. This has been corrected.
• The Bloodthirsty Gladiator's Insignia of Victory now correctly grants Strength when it procs, rather than Agility.
• All of the Bloodthirsty and Vicious Gladiator gloves now have the appropriate glove bonuses for their respective classes.
• Players can no longer buy the opposing faction's mounts in Alterac Valley.
• Some items improperly shared duplicate stats with other items and have had their stats adjusted, including: Emberstone Staff, Rockslicer, Elekk-Horn Waistguard, Termination Axe, Sorrow's End, Soulsurge Necklace, Corefire Legplates, Blockade's Lost Shield, Sussurating Treads of Shok'sharak, Blazewing's Furious Kilt, Armagedillo's Tail, Book of Origination, Torturer's Mercy, Modgud's Blade, Maldo's Sword Cane, Maldo's Sword Cane (Heroic), Shadowskulk Leggings, Drape of Fiery Dreams, Hood of the Crying Rogue, Spaulders of the Savage Beast, Helm of Fatal Vision, Oath-Bound Gauntlets, Belt of Guardianship, Dorian's Lost Necklace, Don Rodrigo's Fabulous Necklace, Pauldrons of Edward the Odd, Je'Tze's Sparkling Tiara, Heartbound Tome, Arrowsinger Legguards, Thartuk's Inimitable Gauntlets, Terborus's Rotating Bands, Tol'Vir Heriditary Girdle,
• Reputation is no longer being granted while wearing the Tabard of the Guardians of Hyjal in normal mode Blackrock Caverns.

Professions

• Beauty in Blackrock Caverns can now be skinned.
• Canopic Jars are no longer poor quality and now show as white (standard) items.
• Obisidum Ore now spawns slightly less frequently in Mount Hyjal.
• The Blacksmithing Redsteel Shoulders item is now uncommon (green) quality.
• The Stormforged Legguards item is now rare (blue) quality.

PvP

• Progress is now properly tracked for the achievement Tol Barad Saboteur.

Quests & Creatures

• Feast of Winter Veil: there is now a quest blob surrounding the area of Growless Cave for the quest "You're a Mean One..."

Cataclysm Zones
Deepholm

• Pebble is correctly able to be picked back up if he despawns while being escorted from the crumbling depths for the quest "Lost in the Deeps".

Mount Hyjal

• Players are now able to enter the portal to the Firelands Hatchery as ghosts after the Aviana Regrowth event has occurred.

Twilight Highlands

• Grot Deathblow (Dragonmaw Quartermaster) and Craw MacGraw (Wildhammer Quartermaster) can no longer be killed by members of the opposing faction.
• "Bring Down the High Shaman" and "Warlord Halthar is Back" are now group quests.
• The amount of Wildhammer Food Stores required to complete the associated quests has been reduced to 10, down from 15. Please note the quest text will still state that 15 are needed until a client-side patch can be implemented to correct this.

Uldum

• Players are no longer able to receive Efficient Excavations before completing the quest "Do the Honors".

Vashj'ir

• Players can now ride the Seahorse in Darkbreak and Tenebrous Cavern.
• The questgiver Fiasco Sizzlegrin is now visible and giving the quest "Crafty Crabs" upon completion of "Waking the Beast". "Crafty Crabs" remain acceptable while players work on the other quests in the associated cave.

Eastern Kingdoms
Stormwind

• Earthworm Mounds for the quest "Diggin' For Worms" should now respawn more quickly.

Northrend
Sholazar Basin

• Bonescythe Ravagers no longer award experience or loot.

Outland
Hellfire Peninsula

• The quest requirements for the achievement To Hellfire and Back have been lowered for both Horde and Alliance characters. Horde characters need to complete 86 quests and Alliance characters need to complete 76.

Winter Veil Bosses
The denizens of the dungeons of Northrend are also getting into the holiday spirit, and some dungeon bosses even wear festive Winter Hats just like Greatfather Winter's. Defeat a Winter Veil boss, and the boss' hat is yours!

Winter Veil bosses of Northrend:

• Grand Magus Telestra (The Nexus) - Red Winter Hat
• Jedoga Shadowseeker (Ahn'Kahet: The Old Kingdom) - Red Winter Hat
• Mage-Lord Urom (The Oculus) - Green Winter Hat

Cataclysm Winter Veil bosses

• Deadmines (Heroic) - Admiral Ripsnarl
• The Stone Core (Normal + Heroic) - High Priestess Azil
• Blackrock Caverns (Normal + Heroic) - Corla, Herald of Twilight
• Shadowfang Keep (Heroic) - Lord Godfrey
• Grim Batol (Normal + Heroic) - Drahga Shadowburner

From December 25th to January 2nd only

Guild: Realm First! Working as a Team
Archaeology is a requirement for the Guild Achievement Working as a Team. It's incorrectly not shown on the criteria list, which is a bug, and will be fixed in a future patch. (Source)

Hotfixes Unpredictability
Applying a hotfix is a complicated process that involves many different developers, including in this case designers, QA and server programmers. These changes are applied live, which is a very different scenario than when things are changed for an upcoming build. We still make our best efforts to coordinate our list of hotfixes with the actual hotfixed data. In this case they were made within a few hours of each other. It takes time to track the progress of all of the hotfixes being developed, as we cannot announce them until we receive confirmation that the hotfixes have been tested by QA and pushed live by our programmers. While this whole process is taking place, we're compiling a large list of all of the changes made each day so we can update players in as timely a fashion as possible. (Source)

Paladin (Forums / Cataclysm Talent Calculator / Beta Skills/Talents)
Holy Paladin Nerf
It is intended that Protector of the Innocent and Light of Dawn transfer healing through Beacon of Light. Furthermore, we didn’t feel that changing either of those would have fixed the problem. When we looked at the numbers, paladins were getting far more Holy Power from Holy Light using Tower of Radiance than we had predicted they would. This wasn’t a problem of paladins topping healing meters or anything like that. The problem was that paladins could heal much more efficiently than other healers. Healers of equal skill should run out of mana at about the same time. In this situation, we didn’t want to buff everyone else to the paladin level, because we think the experience of priest, druid and shaman healers is playing out as we intended. (But we will keep monitoring things.) We understand some healers still don’t feel that they have enough mana to be able to do their jobs and we understand the design has changed somewhat from the Wrath of the Lich King healing model. However, the heroic dungeons are intended to be challenging. Moreover, the Cataclysm expansion has only been live for a week. Players are still improving their gear, learning the boss fights and getting familiar with the new healing philosophy. (Source)

Holy Paladins/Holy Power
Holy paladins can generate Holy Power through a number of mechanics: using Holy Shock is intended to be the main one. They can also take damage through Blessed Life or heal a Beaconed target with Flash of Light or Divine Light.

The problem we were seeing is that Holy Light was made very inexpensive so that paladins always had a cheap go-to heal. Paladins had figured out to use this as a Holy Power generator for Light of Dawn. They didn’t even care about healing the tank per se – they were just casting 3 Holy Lights to earn the Light of Dawn. It seemed to us an effortless way to play that was super effective. With these changes, we expect to see paladins making more decisions – sometimes they might want to Holy Light a Beaconed target just because that’s the right spell at the moment. They may also Holy Light non-Beaconed targets. They will still Holy Shock on cooldown, which will generate plenty of Holy Power.

Those of you saying Holy paladins will no longer generate Holy Power might be taking the change a little too much to heart. That's not the design intent behind Holy paladins, nor a desired outcome of the Tower of Radiance change. In fact, we haven't seen this to be the outcome since the change was applied. Often times when we bring an overpowered ability back into line, the reaction we see on the forums is that the ability itself, or the core mechanics of the spec, has been gutted. That's a natural reaction in most cases, this one being no exception, as paladins will have to adjust to a change that came rather suddenly in the middle of gameplay (i.e. in a hotfix rather than a patch).

We understand there is also a mixture of concerns regarding this change which really revolve more around general healer mana regeneration in Cataclysm. Some paladins may claim Holy Light is now the only affordable heal. This is inaccurate and we're confident we'll see talented paladins shine using all of the appropriate tools in their kit. Perhaps, if anything, it means paladins can't afford to spam many different heals. That doesn't mean they're not useful given the appropriate situation.

(For instance, when the tank is very injured or you have to move, use a Flash of Light. If the damage is coming in faster than you can heal, use a Divine Light. You aren’t playing badly by using these spells – you are playing badly if you only use these spells and neglect the efficient ones.)

When we see players who claim they don’t have enough mana to heal, one of the following is usually true: 1) they are undergeared for the instance, 2) the tanks are trying to tank everything without CC, 3) they are avoiding Spirit on their gear, 4) they are trying to keep everyone topped off as fast as they can by resorting to fast spells (like Flash of Light) or relatively expensive area heals when they aren’t warranted. If someone is about to die – absolutely save them. Using Holy Radiance (40% mana) to get two folks who are at 95% back to 100% is not efficient. Throw a Holy Light (9% mana each) at each of them instead. (Source)